INTRODUCTION

As Professor Hardin suggests in the quote above, the labor and employment law of the United States is not a cohesive set of laws. Instead, it has developed over time with different underlying principles prompting the development of the law at different times. Broadly, the periods of U.S. law may be divided into the organized labor/collective bargaining period from the 1930s to the early 1960s, and the individual employment rights period from the early 1960s to the present. The one prominent exception to these divisions is the Fair Labor Standards Act, an individual employment rights law (imposing a minimum wage and overtime pay and restricting child labor) enacted in 1938. Although the FLSA was not based on the organized labor/collective bargaining model, it was viewed as supporting the collective bargaining model, and the legislation was supported by organized labor.

In the 1930s, the paradigm of organized labor and collective bargaining and collective action prompted Congress to pass the Wagner Act (or National Labor Relations Act), which protected the rights of employees to join unions and engage in collective bargaining with their employers.